233. I Flew On A Private Jet, Here’s What The Rich Don’t Tell You

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift. Alongside me is Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. We're here to bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights as we help you crush this crypto bull market. Plus get an exclusive behind the scenes look at suisscale, one of the world's leading crypto research companies. If you like the podcast, we'd love for you to share it with a friend. It's how we grow the podcast each and every week. If you're on YouTube, subscribe. We love to grow our followers so we can keep bringing this to you for free every week in Bergs. Mate. Yesterday or Monday, I did one of the craziest things I've done. Something on my bucket list I've had for a long time. It was wild. It was, it was a decision. It was made last minute because I needed to essentially be in two places at once. And we had two massive things going on at once. I was in Brisbane doing a podcast with SwiftX and meeting one of our new hires in Brisbane and I couldn't get back to Melbourne until later that night. And we had Travis who was coming over from Perth to Melbourne and I had to negotiate a pretty big deal with. And then the day after, so Tuesday, we had our largest high net worth summit that we've, we've done. We had over 1700 people, you know, join that, which was wild and we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that event and I essentially needed to be back for that, to prepare. And it was a decision we made to end up flying on a small private jet, which was insane.

I'm so jealous, mate. Flying private, bro.

It was, it's been in my bucket list for a long time. I can see why people do it. Full transparency, you know, definitely don't own one. Nowhere near that level of wealth yet. And I said, I said to my girlfriend, because we're both up there that we, you know, we back, we'll be back to Jetstar next week to balance things out. But we also recorded, you know, a lot of, you know, ads and content were on there just to sort of, you know, make sure we utilize as much as we could. But the whole experience was just insane, the time saving and I think like as I've grown my wealth over time, you know.

More than ever I've realized that money allows you to buy back time. And this was like the perfect example of it, like where I literally Couldn't get back from Brisbane to Melbourne. I wouldn't have gotten home until 8, 9 o' clock pm on the Monday night. I wouldn't have been able to do my meeting with Travis. I wouldn't have been able to prepare for the summit, which we had a massive, massive day for, which we needed to prepare for, which I had no time for. Instead, the process was just insane. It took it from like a five hour, four hour whole process to like two, two and a half hours. I was, I was out of Brisbane and back in Melbourne and back in the office by like 4pm So I essentially saved four hours of time. And looking back, I'm like, this is why people do it. Like if you literally, time is money and you have the wealth to be able to do that consistently. The pilot was telling us how the jet that we, we hired was one of his clients who, he just uses it as a car essentially. They just fly around wherever to get to certain places. The whole experience was wild, man.

It was, let's talk through the experience because I've not heard this story and you know, the usual experience is you rock up to an airport, you have to catch an Uber there. You'll be at least an hour before your domestic flight goes, you have to go through, put all your bags in, your plane's probably late, you have to board the plane, plane, there's always delays on the Runway, get up, finally fly, have that experience, get off on the other side, wait for your bag. Sometimes up to two hours. For some reason, every time I come back from Melbourne, there's always a huge, huge delay. Grab your bags and then Uber back to your place. So what was the experience like traveling on a jet? How was it like getting to the airport? Where did you go, how did you board? What was that all like?

It was, it was eye opening. The only way I can explain it is that there's levels to this game that and you don't even know how high you go because when you upgrade a level you realize there's like 10 other levels above you. So yeah, it was, I was, I had a meeting with Zan, our sales guy in the morning. First time I met him, I was then at the SwiftX office to do a podcast in the morning. They, the jet company organized a car to pick up my girlfriend from the hotel because she had to work in the morning. Picked up our sales guy because he ended up flying down with us. Josh was there, our content guy as well. Picked everyone up, picked me up from the SwiftX office. We got in the car bags already loaded. We didn't go to the main airport. It was a. The private with a private air Runway airstrip side of the other side of the Brisbane airport. We go in, the driver just buzzes the intercom. We get out, we go into, we just walk into this. Think of it like the Virgin Lounge. But no one's in there, right? You just go in there. There's no one else in there. It's all yours. You go in, a guy greets you, he's like, what do you guys want to drink on the plane? And we're like, we get a choice.

What is this?

Yeah, what like, what do you mean? He's like, do you want soft drink? Do you want champagne? You want. Be like, what do you want? And I was like, oh well, you know, I, I'll have, I'll have a couple of, couple of waters. Coke Zeros lure out a shed, a bowl of champagne. So they're loaded out and the jets there, right? And the first thing we see was our jet was the smaller one. There was a massive jet in front of us already. Like, you know, this is the most wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the most wild experience. But you know, on the, you know, we're still the poor guy here, right? So you go in, then the pilot comes out. Pilot rolls in. He's just like most chill guys, like, boys, how are we? What's going on? Are you ready to rumble? Like, got the jet lined up, we're all fueled up. You boys ready to go? He's like, right, quick, quick, quick. Just, you know, we'll do the safety stuff here. So you know how they do this whole thing, you know, phones off, you know, while you're in the airline and you put the seatbelt on right, everyone's got to listen. Nah, my pilots comes out right up, boys, just, you know, if we hit a bit of turbulence, just strap it from the roof, plug in, right, we're good to go, right, let's go. And they're like, no security, no like anything. They just took our bag. They didn't even ID check us. We just got on. They loaded up the back of the jet. Like back of the jet, bags are on. There's the pilot and two security guys walk us out onto the tarmac. There's just, and then there's just our jet. This thing is just this black eight, eight seater plane. It was insane. It was a beautiful day. This thing was just like unreal. The pilot was like talking us through how, you know, how he flies for the client who owns it. He was, like, talking us through the plane. And then, like, you know, he's like, just so you guys know, like, the takeoff experience, he said, I've been doing this for years. Never gets old. Just so you know, when we take off, you're gonna feel it, like, it's like a roller coaster.

And we're like, yeah, like, push down into your seat.

Yeah. We're like, right, mate, we'll see how we go. Anyway, so we get on the plane, doors up, like, just walking on, like, with, you know, the door. It was like a movie, man. It was just crazy. We sit down and we're all just looking at each other going like, this is next level. This is just wild. Sit down. Like, obviously there's no air hostesses, there's no nothing. He's just in the front of the plane. He gets air. He gets. The air traffic control gets approved. He's got, like, you know, the. The pilot thing on. He's like. He turns around.

Co pilot, just the one guy, and.

He turns around and he goes, right, Laura, my girlfriend, you're in the captain's chair by your side. Open up that little flap and you're going to see a digital control. Now, when I'm taking off, if I can't hear the music absolutely pumping back there, I'm not going to take off.

He's like, I want back there to be an absolute, like, nightclub, basically. And we're just like, what the fuck? So Laura's, like, connected to the Bluetooth. We're, like, taxing out, like, we're, like, taxing out past all the big. The big, like, you know, virgin flights, like Eddie had. And we're just, like, going this Runway and these things, like, cruise along. There's, like, music pumping, and then we're, like, getting on the. You know, when you go on the Runway and you sit there for a bit and then, like, the plane, like, slowly takes off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gotta wait, mate.

We go onto the Runway and it was like the. The G force, like, all of our heads went. Just sucked back to the back of the chair. It was like no one could talk. You feel your face go like this. And then within, literally, like, no one was prepared. We're like, what the. This is. Like, there was no. There's no seat belt sign. Like, there was. It was just like, we're going. It was like, no, around, no turn your mate, mate. And then this jet and he's like. And this. What he explained, he's like, when you take off, it's. It feels like A rocket ship. If the, the elevation is a lot higher than a commercial airline, you'll like, you're just going straight up to space. He said, that's fine, that's normal. We. They actually fly the private airlines higher than the commercial. You fly at 45,000ft. So you like climb like a rocket for like a few minutes. So we're all just chatting away with thing and it's just going to like slowly take off, mate. We're sucked back and then this, this thing just takes off and honestly there's a.

My face was just sucked back and we're just taking off like a rocket and we're all just like holy. And music's pumping. We're like, this is just like out of control. And then, yeah, it got to the top and it was just such a surreal experience. It was like, it was fast. We got there within a couple of hours. We recorded a bunch of content. You know, we were just working. Laura was getting drunk, she was having a great time. And the pilot was like talking us through. He's like pointing. So it was like a, it was like a tour. He's like, yeah, look over there. You've got the, the mountains and this is like if you look over the, the coast, that's where that location is.

And he just said, I always thought they flew lower. So is it when high. Is it like higher pressure in there or anything or. It just feels like a normal plane that you're in.

It felt actually more better. You know when you get like the air, like your ears kind of pop and stuff. You didn't even get that. I didn't, yeah. It was actually a lot smoother. Like there was only a little bit of turbulence at the end. The first like hour and a half was so smooth. And then we came down to land. We landed in Essendon. So Essendon's like, they're not the main airport in, in Melbourne, mate. We landed. Smoothest landing ever. They pull over to the big and he's like right up right away, ladies and gentlemen, like, thank you so much. You guys have been so much fun. But you're gonna. If you've ever felt, you know, the small fish of the crowd. We're about to pull up to the big boys planes and we're like, oh, here we go. So we pull up to this big hangar in Essendon and there's just man, these like massive ass jets, like hu. Humongous, like 15 seater, like unbelievable look like multi, multi, multi tens of million dollar jets. And we just pull up, they open the door, they Put like, a little, like.

Like.

Like a door mat, like, at the bottom of the thing. We walk out, there's a. There's a black SUV just waiting for us. They just get our bags out, load up the car, we walk out of the plane, into the car, and then we just drive out of the airport. No security, no waiting for bags, no anything. And we're. We were back in the office within, like, 40 minutes. It was just. And then we just. We got. We just looked at each other. We're like. That was like, the most. What just happened? What just happened? Like, we did, like. We didn't see anyone. We didn't do anything. We didn't have to talk to anyone. We just got on, got off, and got home, and it was just like, insane.

And within. Okay, so within the plane, how was, like, the comfort level compared to something like business class on a decent plane?

I mean, it was like. So there was four seats looking at each other, so two and two, like, facing each other, and there was two behind us. There's so much room. You can't stand up. Like, it's. The roof was lower, so you have to kind of sit down. But they got recliners that. It was super, like, luxury. So it's comfy. They had tables. They packed on, like, wine and, you know, fruit and food for us, obviously, just serve yourself. Like, there's no.

No air. Like airline people. The toilet, though. The toilet. You can't stand up in the toilet, so you've got to sit down to pee.

As a dude, you'd be used to that anyway, mate.

Oh, mate. Yeah, very used to that.

Oh, it's like. Like when you're on a bus or something. Like, you know, when you got the. The daddy in the back, you can't, because your head will hit the top.

But, yeah, it was just like. You can see why, if you've got that level of money, why you do it? Because you just, honestly, you just save so much time around.

It's less fuss, and your car's right there. You don't have to wait. And the airport's not really far away.

No. And it's just like, you don't go through the security. You don't have to be there an hour early. You literally drive up to it and you just get. Get out. And it was just.

Honestly, like, those guys playing at that level. There's just different rules, man. These guys play at different rules. There was no ID check. They didn't do security. Your bags don't go through anything. You weren't like, wandered down. You weren't patted down, you got in and got off. Like, it's just different rules. It's crazy. It's wild.

Absolutely insane, man. So how do you rate the experience overall, mate?

Oh, it was. Yeah, it was amazing. It was. It was unreal. I did say to the team that I was like, right, next week we're flying, we're back in economy and Jetstar, just to balance it out because, you know, it's. It's like one of those things when you. Once you fly business class to go back to economy, you really feel it. This is. I think that's going to be one of those things.

And just having, I think, the privacy and only the people you like on the plane rather than, you know, the screaming baby or the really annoying smelly guy or someone that's got really big shoulders or whatever sitting bloody next to you on the plane, man, you.

You would, you would. You would like it. As a guy that doesn't love flying, like, I could see you really enjoying that. It was just. And you know what? It was so much fun to bring not only Laura, my girlfriend, but Josh and Zen. Like, these are younger guys that work with me. Like, they were just, like blown away by the experience. And that's one of the best things I think about doing this business is we're making money ourselves, we're making our clients money, but also our team. And we can just do these experiences and have these amazing things with people that we, we want to, you know, help succeed. It's just so bad. It was. It was cool, man.

Yeah, it's a bucket list item and it's something that you'll kind of remember forever, right?

Yeah, yeah, totally. It was so cool. And obviously, like, I wanted to not be this show offy thing that it was, you know, it's not something that happens all the time. It costs a lot of money, but it was for a purpose. It was to invest into what just played out yesterday, which was possibly one of our most successful summits we've ever had. And, you know, if we didn't have that time, I was doing my slides right up to three minutes before I went onto stage. I would have lost four hours of time. Like, it wouldn't have happened.

I saw that in the WhatsApp chat and I'm like, dude, what are you doing? You're like, my slides, my slides. I'm up my slides. And Josh, like, just give me a minute. And I'm like, oh, God. Can't get to the absolute microsecond because.

We'Re always like, we're always improving. Like, we could have used the same content as we've done before, but we're always improving. We sat down, we did so much strategy, we worked on it, you know, and the delivery yesterday was way better than we've done before. It's continuously improvement. I, I would. I hate the idea of doing the same over and over and over again. Not improving, not getting better results and just plateauing. Like, that's boring to me. I'm not in this game to, to plateau and just be average. Like, we're here to win and that's why we get every minute out of every day because we want to improve and succeed. And that's just like, that's the game.

Yeah. The day you stop wanting to do that is the day you should retire.

100. If I stop wanting to do that, well, I'll be bored. I won't want to do it anymore.

Game over.

Yeah. So, yeah, man.

Absolutely incredible.

Crazy.

Story, man. So good.

I.

It would have gone really fast as well, because it's not a long flight, it's only a couple of hours. And by the time, you know, you get on, you fly and you come back, especially if you're doing a bit of work, it's like you look down, you look up, and it's time to land.

Yeah, yeah. And. Yeah, just all this, all the, all the noise, all the crap, all the wasted time in the, in the airport and fucking around at security. And then like you're in the lounge and then you've got a board and then you're sitting on. And like, you know, by the way, I'm saying this knowing that I'm 100% going back to doing all this very soon, but I can see why.

Yeah, but you're comparing the experiences, right? Yeah.

Like if you've got big, big money, like, and that's what the pilot said, he flies to the owner, he uses it like a. Like a car. Like they'll just fly around wherever they need to go to save time. And if you've got the money. Yeah, money buys you back time.

That's the thing in life. You either use your money or your time. And if you've got lots and lots and lots of money, you would use that because time is the scarcer, non renewable resource that you have.

Yeah.

And it's weird to say like that and people hate on it, but it's like some people just play that game. That's the level that they're at.

Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

And even people that are super, super important, like the one engineering guy that can only do that thing because he has that specific knowledge. It's like his time is worth so much. You fly them around, you get them there quickly because you need that thing done and they're the only person that can do it because it's so specific.

Yeah. And also like, you know, the only thing you have a finite resource of is time. And that like a private jet is the extreme example of that. But like bringing it back to things, like having a cleaner for me at home is fucking amazing because I came home, the house is clean and I fucking hate cleaning or having, you know, Alice, my ea, who does all of the admin had, does schedules, all everything. Like a mate of mine asked, like, mate, that was so cool. Like, you know, which company did you book the jet through? I'm like, man, I have no idea. I didn't do any of it. Like my EA organizes it all like that, that time being able to have the support and assistance to help you spend more time on what your superpower is, is the key to success, in my opinion, in business or in any sort of, you know, area where you're trying to grow and be better.

To be good in one area in life, you have to say no to other areas. You have to specifically choose and to be used at your highest utility. You just can't do some things, other people need to do them for you. And it's a weird kind of concept. But the less that you have on your plate, the more you can focus on that huge growth area and being used at your highest utility rather than spending time, whether it's cooking, cleaning, traveling, dusting, whatever it may be, gardening, like outsourcing, all of that. And that is generally what it takes to succeed where you have to say you have to be.

Outsized, amount of attention and time in very few areas to get to the top few percent and you neglect those other areas of your life. You see this quite commonly where people will neglect their relationships or home lives or they won't have a partner or you know, they won't have a social life or they won't go to the gym, things like that. And because they want to be very successful in that one or two areas, that's very important to them.

Yeah, not totally. And by the way, guys, I've been doing this game for nine years. I've done the absolute budget of the budget. Lived above a 711 in Bali with no bedroom, just a one room apartment, trying to figure it out in massive debt Making no money, like, done all of that, you know, don't forget that this is a journey. And you hear these stories and think, oh, like, you know, lucky him. Or like all this. I'm like, nah, work my ass off every day for nine years. That's how I got here. I started.

Yeah.

Wasn't gifted anything in life. Same with you, Bo. You know, neither of us were gifted anything, you know, bring up. Apart from good parents. Yeah. Everybody for my parents. And that's what instilled in me.

But yeah, we're having this conversation before where people mistake success for privilege.

Yes.

And privilege is unearned. And if you think about your life specifically, like flying around the world trying to make a company work. And when we say we're flying, it's like you're going somewhere for a cheaper cost of living because you're not being paid. Trying to figure it out. Don't have a house, don't have a car, don't actually get any money from the company. You're in significant debt because you put money into the company and you owe the ato. Everything like that. And then this is years and years and years of effort. So it's hard when people just look at the success portion and don't apportion it over all the difficult things you've done where the majority of people would have given up. And that's where I hate where people see success. They just see that endpoint and they hate on other people. But it's like, no, what did that person do to get there? How long did it take them? What did they sacrifice and apply that before you start judging them?

100. Totally agree. My great way to end. Thank you so much, listeners. Hopefully you enjoyed that story.

Yeah. Once in a lifetime experience was absolutely epic. And yeah, keep, keep, keep pushing. I think the, the biggest thing I just reflect on there, but it's like, yeah, I remember those, those times. All the amount of times I wanted to give up and just everything was just like, this is ridiculous.

Yes.

So sickening. The pain we went through to try get to where we are.

And it's funny how, like, the goal was not to fly private and to get on a jet. The goal was, how do I do these three very important things all at the same time.

Yes.

And you managed to get them all done. And this is going to propel our company forward and we're going to be more successful as a company and actually has nothing to do with the tooling which was the jet that you flew on.

Absolutely not.

What is that? Whereas People just see the jet or whatever it is, and they're like, oh, that's the goal. That's the thing I need to achieve a site. No, no, no. This is in facilitation of a much larger goal.

Yesterday we had thousands of people. You know, yesterday will. Will generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in. In revenue. And.

That is the outcome of the investment. You know, a lot of people, you know, don't think about that. It's just like, I just align item expense, like, no, that for me, the way I think about it, that was an investment to get the outcome. Now, was it a risk? Yes. What happens if I still fucked it up? Well, yeah, obviously it comes with risks, but it wasn't like, how can I fly private? It was like, yeah, like you said, how can I do these three things that I need to do all at.

Once and stack the odds in your favor and actually have a good chance of success instead of delays and being absolutely wrecked, not getting there on time, stressing out, and then delivering your shit thing if you make it at all.

Literally.

Well, actually, you couldn't because there weren't flights at that time as well.

No.

Well, you have to sacrifice a few of the things that you did, and none of them were really worth sacrificing because they're all massive, massive points of leverage. Yep.

Slides would have been done and, you know, I wouldn't have had that conversation with Trapp, so. Anyway, legendary. Thank you, folks. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you like these podcasts, we'd love for you to leave us a follow. Check out our other episodes. We have so much great content coming out to you each every week. And we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks, champions.